Oklahoma City

Since we have an extra day of rest before our race Saturday, we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.

I have to preface this with saying this is absolutely the most complete and sobering memorial and museum we have ever seen.  It is amazing the amount of original materials and artifacts that were kept, reused and/or preserved.

This is the “Gates of Time”, a monument built of twin “gates”.  The East Gate, inscribed with the time of 9:01, represents the innocence of the city before the attack, and the West Gate in the distance,  seen through the entrance is inscribed with the time of 9:03, the moment of the bomb blast.

 

This is the only remaining section of the Murrah building.

The West gate, as seen from the end of the reflecting pool, that spans the distance between the two gates.  The pool occupies what was once NW Fifth Street.

This is the “Field of Empty Chairs”.  Each bronze and glass chair represents a person who perished in the blast. The chairs are arranged in 9 rows,  signifying the floor where the individual was at the moment of the blast. Smaller chairs represent the children, of which 19 were killed.  There are five additional chairs, placed at the west end of the field, one for each of the five individuals that were killed outside the building.  The field’s perimeter outlines the original footprint of the Murrah Building.  The path around the field is paved with granite, which was salvaged from the main plaza of the Murrah Building.

In the aftermath, countless expressions of encouragement were received from children from all of the world.  This is a wall of hand painted tiles sent to Oklahoma City in 1995 by children.

The first fence was installed immediately after the blast to protect the site of the Murrah Building.  This is more than 200 feet of the original fence where people continue to leave tokens of remembrance and hope.  I counted many Marathon and Half Marathon medals on the fence.  (There is the Memorial Marathon run every year, in the first week of April to memorialize the victims).

This is the differential from the Ryder truck used in the blast.  It is the serial number from the housing that led the authorities to the bomber. You can see where the investigators buffed the serial number on the housing, just below the number 3.

This is taken from inside the Journal Record Building.  This was the men’s restroom.  It was left in the original condition.  The adjacent room housed the editor of the Journal.  He was in the room at the time of the blast and survived.

This 90-year-old American Elm is known as the “Survivor Tree”. This tree was between the Murrah and the Journal buildings at the time of the blast.  It was shattered and covered with debris, but survived.  Each year seedlings are taken from here and given to the families of the deceased for replanting.

St. Joseph Catholic Church, the oldest parish in Oklahoma city was destroyed in the blast. They chose to erect this memorial instead of a new church, across the street from the West Wall.  There are 19 black pillars,  probably to represent the 19 children killed, and there are 168 “niches” in the wall behind us designed for candles for the  victims.  It is titled “And Jesus Wept”.

This is a view from the original children’s play area, looking across the Field of Chairs and the reflecting pool to the Journal Building.

We found this original graffiti on the wall of the Journal building.  There were multiple interagency rescue and recovery teams working and it appears “Team 5” let their feelings be known during the recovery.

In the afternoon, we went south to Norman, to see the University of Oklahoma campus. After touring the campus and visiting the University bookstore, we went to the stadium.  It was locked tighter than a drum.  There was construction ongoing at the south end of the stadium and that area was “hard hat only” so we did not have any luck getting in to see the field.

We found the office for the video production team and after talking cameras with them for a few minutes, they led us on a quick tour of the facility.  Pretty impressive stadium, they have seven national championships, second only to Alabama (I believe) and were very cordial to us.  They told us their scoreboard is the largest in the nation for college football. I would have to take their word for it, as it was huge.